Iraqi Defends Germ Program to Journalist

BETH GARDINER

Published 7:00 pm, Saturday, February 8, 2003

Associated Press Writer

A scientist believed to have played a leading role in Iraq's biological weapons program said in an interview broadcast Sunday her country was justified in producing germ weapons in the 1980s and 1990s to defend itself.

Rihab Taha also said she helped compile the biological section of Iraq's recent weapons declaration and described it as honest and transparent.

The scientist was interviewed in Baghdad on Jan. 21 by British journalist Jane Corbin. Five officials and guards sat in on the meeting, filmed by the British Broadcasting Corp.'s "Panorama" program at the office of the Iraqi agency that deals with U.N. weapons inspectors.

Taha told the BBC her country never planned to use the biological agents it produced in the 1980s and early 1990s.

"We never wanted to cause harm or damage to anybody," she said. "Iraq has been threatened by different enemies and we are in an area that suffers from regional conflict. I think it is our right to have something to defend ourselves and to have something as a deterrent."

Taha is believed to have been a driving force behind Iraq's production of germ weapons in the 1980s and 1990s, the BBC said. She told the program she no longer does such work.

Taha has refused to meet alone with U.N. weapons inspectors now in Iraq.

"I do not trust them from the last inspections," she said. "I think it is better for me and for them and for everybody to have witnesses because I think it is our right."

Iraq's most comprehensive attempt to rebut claims it has nuclear, chemical and biological weapons was a declaration to the United Nations in December. The United States and Britain dismissed the 12,000-page declaration as lies and a rehash of old information.

The journalist also gave an account of her interview with Taha in The Sunday Telegraph newspaper. That report said Taha acknowledged producing "biological agents" including anthrax and botulinum toxins, but insisted they were intended for self-defense.

In the article, Corbin quoted Taha as saying the biological section of the declaration, which she said she helped compile, was "very transparent, believe me, giving even tiny details."

Specifically she took issue with the inspectors' assertion that there is a discrepancy between the amount of anthrax Iraq produced and what it has accounted for.

"The inspectors' assessment of the amount of anthrax is based on a numerical calculation only _ that the production facilities we had between 1988 and 1990 worked nonstop, day and night to produce such quantities," she said. "It's not a realistic calculation."

Inspectors who discount the regime's declaration "have bad intentions toward Iraq because they are under the rule and the influence of different countries and governments," she was quoted as saying.

Inspectors have been trying for weeks to speak privately with Iraqi scientists linked to the country's alleged weapons programs. The arms monitors believe the experts would be more forthright without an Iraqi official present.

Most scientists have refused to attend such meetings, but the fifth one in three days submitted to an interview with inspectors Saturday.